Carol’s Potato Salad
Carol’s potato salad is mayo, mustard, yellow onion, celery, and dill relish dressed on hot potatoes. No secrets. Just muscle memory and good timing.
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A Logo, a Pepper, and a Year of Trying to Look Like Myself
So I’ve been redesigning the blog. I’ll spare y’all the full backstage tour, but if you’ve been around here for any length of time, you’ve watched me cycle through enough visual identities to fill a small museum. Or possibly a cautionary tale. There was the cursive script phase, when the header looked like a wedding…
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What Cinco de Mayo Actually Is (and Why I Still Make Enchiladas)
I did not grow up observing Cinco de Mayo. Nobody in my Texas family did. It wasn’t a holiday in the way Christmas or Thanksgiving or even the Fourth of July was a holiday; it was a date on the calendar that occasionally meant something at school and otherwise didn’t. In college it became an…
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Life with a Pibble: Meet Remy
I’m writing this with a 71-pound pit bull pressed against my side on the sofa. Full velcro-dog mode. He’s dreaming, twitching, and making those adorable snorting sounds that pit bulls do. His name is Remy, and he is categorically the least threatening creature on the planet. How We Got Remy We adopted Remy on February…
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Being Authentic
This is the forested area behind our house. It’s the part of our property that the creek runs through. It’s where I go when I need peace and calm and to escape from the world for a little bit. If you’ve been reading this blog since I restarted it this month, you’ve noticed something: this…
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The Optimist: The Best Seafood in Atlanta
In July 2019, I took Zach to The Optimist for his birthday. It was our first time there, and I’m just going to say it up front: it’s the best seafood we’ve had anywhere. Better than St. Simons. Better than the coast. Better than a lot of places we’ve eaten on our travels. The Optimist…
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Here We F****** Are Again
I had a whole other post planned for today. A fun one. One talking about our favorite seafood restaurant in Atlanta. It was written, scheduled, and ready to go. And yesterday morning cos-playing ICE thugs murdered another American citizen. This time a man. A nurse. 37 years old. A good man. His parents told him…
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What My Mother Taught Me About Cooking (And About Being Fearless)
She was fearless in a way I didn’t fully appreciate until I was older …
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Southern Style Cornbread
This is my grandmother’s cornbread recipe, halved for smaller households. She made twice this amount in a 12-inch skillet, feeding a family of six plus whoever showed up at dinnertime (which in rural Texas was often neighbors, cousins, or people from church). This version makes enough for 4 people, or 2 people with leftovers for…
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The New Dietary Guidelines: I Hate Admitting They’re Not Completely Wrong
I’m going to say something that physically pains me to type: the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2025-2030, released by the Trump administration under RFK Jr.’s leadership at HHS, are not completely wrong about everything. There. I said it. I hate it. And now I need to explain why this makes me so uncomfortable. This…
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Collard Greens
In the South, collards are a staple side dish, but they’re also a New Year’s Day tradition: My Meemaw (my East Texas grandmother) always made collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread for New Year’s Day. Every single year, without fail: greens for money, peas for luck in the coming year.
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Welcome to 2026: A Fresh Start
Subtitled: State of The Blog & Where I Stand Those of you who have been around for a while know I’ve tried to restart this blog multiple times since it first went quiet around 2014. I’d get excited, plan content, write posts, even publish a handful of them. And then… silence. Rinse and repeat for…
